Since 2014, CG Garage has brought lively, informal conversations with Oscar-winning legends, visionary artists, and the innovators driving the industry's biggest technological leaps. From in-depth interviews to spirited roundtable discussions, hosts Chris Nichols and Daniel Thron explore the art, craft, and future of filmmaking. With Hollywood in the middle of a major revolution, we talk to the filmmakers who are making that transformation possible, covering everything from behind-the-scenes stories on iconic movies to the cutting-edge tools reshaping the industry.
CG Garage
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559 episodes
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Podcast Overview
Since 2014, CG Garage has brought lively, informal conversations with Oscar-winning legends, visionary artists, and the innovators driving the industry's biggest technological leaps. From in-depth interviews to spirited roundtable discussions, hosts Chris Nichols and Daniel Thron explore the art, craft, and future of filmmaking. With Hollywood in the middle of a major revolution, we talk to the filmmakers who are making that transformation possible, covering everything from behind-the-scenes stories on iconic movies to the cutting-edge tools reshaping the industry.
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Publishing Since
11/24/2014
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Recent Episodes
August 3, 2026
Nolan's Odyssey Is Really a Movie About Waiting | Episode 559
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" dir="ltr">Is it a good movie if you have to watch it ten times? That's the question Chris and Daniel keep circling back to as they take on Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, skipping the marketing noise and the wireframe-cyclops conspiracy theories to actually ask whether the thing works as a film. They dig into what Nolan is doing as a filmmaker, structurally and emotionally, in his adaptation of the oldest story in Western literature, and why a three hour runtime built around a decade-long wait might be the whole point rather than a flaw.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" dir="ltr">The real conversation is about adaptation itself: what happens when a director spends the entire movie making an audience feel exactly what an intractable wait feels like, and why Nolan's obsession with time connects everything from Memento through Tenet to this one. Daniel makes the case that Nolan has finally figured out how to deliver Tenet's disorienting rewatch effect without forcing anyone to actually rewatch anything. Chris and Daniel also compare Nolan's spectacle-forward approach to what a Denis Villeneuve version might have looked like, and get into why single-vision directors are becoming Hollywood's new IP.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" dir="ltr"><strong>Mentioned in this episode:</strong><br /> The Odyssey (Christopher Nolan), Tenet, Dunkirk, Interstellar, Memento, Oppenheimer, Denis Villeneuve, Dune, Avatar, James Cameron, Peter Jackson, Annihilation (Alex Garland), Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven), Inglourious Basterds, Jackie Brown, Frank Gehry, Steven Spielberg, Disclosure Day, Zack Kreger, Ryan Coogler, Hoyte van Hoytema, Wally Pfister, David Lynch, Jack Fisk, Paris, Texas, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Master and Commander, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, Neuromancer (trailer)</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" dir="ltr"><strong>Special thanks to our sponsor:</strong><br /> Center Grid Virtual Studio: <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "https://cgvirtualstudio.com/">https://cgvirtualstudio.com/</a></p>
July 27, 2026
Split Diopters, Indie Film Private Equity, and the Rock and Roll of Making Movies | Episode 558
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" dir="ltr">Something is shifting in independent film right now, and Ron Cohen, one of the producers on June July and a veteran of physical production, is exactly the person to make sense of it. Chris and Daniel bring him in for a wide-ranging conversation that touches on everything from The Odyssey's marketing to the A24 backlash of the moment, but the real news is that the team just wrapped a shoot on June July, and Ron walks through how it actually went.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" dir="ltr">The conversation moves into the details of that shoot, where fully ray traced and relightable Gaussian splats, an unplanned split diopter, and a crew that improvised through a rough second day produced a shot nobody storyboarded. Ron also weighs in on private equity's growing role in indie film financing, the five to ten million dollar sweet spot for creative freedom, and what the Warner Bros/Paramount consolidation could open up for smaller studios willing to bet on story over stars.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" dir="ltr"><strong>References mentioned:</strong><br /> A24<br /> Google DeepMind<br /> The Odyssey<br /> Warner Bros / Paramount</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" dir="ltr"><strong>Sponsors:</strong><br /> <strong>Center Grid Virtual Studio: <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "https://cgvirtualstudio.com/">https://cgvirtualstudio.com/</a></strong></p>
July 20, 2026
Disclosure Day and The Secret Weirdness of Steven Spielberg | Episode 557
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" dir="auto">Steven Spielberg is the most famous filmmaker alive, which is exactly why almost nobody actually understands him. Chris and Daniel use Disclosure Day, Spielberg's new alien chase thriller with Emily Blunt, to argue that the "safe, mainstream" reputation is a decades-long misdirection: underneath the crowd-pleasing surface is a genuinely weird, deeply personal artist who has been smuggling strange, uncomfortable ideas inside blockbuster packaging since at least Close Encounters. They trace it through Fabelman's casting David Lynch as John Ford, the theory that Kubrick handed Spielberg AI specifically because Spielberg's glossy reputation could disguise a bleak, unnerving film, and the moment James Lipton caught Spielberg off guard by connecting his parents directly to Close Encounters on camera.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" dir="auto">Disclosure Day itself is proving strangely divisive, and Chris and Daniel dig into why. They break down its Sugarland Express-style chase structure, an Emily Blunt performance that starts as broad comedy and quietly transforms into something much stranger, a train sequence built to feel genuinely dangerous rather than stylized, and the VFX work from longtime collaborator Matthew Butler. Along the way, a detour into Spielberg's actual filmmaking journey, from Close Encounters to Poltergeist to AI, makes the case that his reputation as the "obvious" director has always been the biggest misdirection in his own filmography.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" dir="auto"><strong>Referenced in this episode:</strong><br /> Disclosure Day<br /> Close Encounters of the Third Kind<br /> Poltergeist<br /> A.I. Artificial Intelligence<br /> War of the Worlds<br /> Minority Report<br /> The Fabelmans<br /> Sugarland Express<br /> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0125056/">Matthew Butler, VFX Supervisor</a></p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal" dir="auto"><strong>Sponsors:</strong><br /> <strong>Center Grid Virtual Studio: <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "https://cgvirtualstudio.com/">https://cgvirtualstudio.com/</a></strong></p>
559 total episodes available
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